API

Architecture & API

Hyperspace: a flexible, object oriented architecture, that natively wraps modern hierarchical asset APIs such as USD and Alembic (potentially including other/future ones) and supporting a variety of back-ends for each. Covers all geometric data and is extensible to any other type of objects such as attributes, collection/set, materials, lights, metadata, etc.

Unified Write/Read/Render Framework

Thanks to Hyperspace I/O asset plug-ins and render-time procedurals are unified. Work independently from the asset hierarchical file format (whether it is USD or Alembic) or from the renderer. Multiverse Studio ships with out of the box support for 3Delight, Arnold and PRMan. Support for V-Ray and Redshift is underway. Support for in-house rendering engines that offer API for rendertime procedurals can be added under consulting.

Sample Interpolation, 3D Motion Blur, Velocity Blur

Sample interpolation works in a completely abstract and automatic way, both at render-time (procedural) and in the Maya VP2. As a consequence it is possible to render with linear motion blur even with only 1 sample per frame. Additionally, full support of multi-sample (curved) 3D deformation motion blur. Ability to read topology-varying Alembic files (such as liquid sims, particle sims, fractures) from Houdini with full support of "velocity blur", so to match in Maya the same look produced by Houdini's Mantra. Furthermore Houdini packed copy/instancing, visibility, full bounding box tree and visibility are supported. See the relative documentation.

Multi-Task Writing, Per-Frame Reading, (Re)Timing Controls

Native writing and reading of both Alembic and USD with motion blur. Ultra-fast and memory efficient per-frame reading of Elastic Compounds, with automatic sample interpolation support, crowd-friendly (re)timing controls both in VP2 and during procedural rendering. Support of a large variety of geometric primitives, attributes and additional metadata. Further ability to perform Multi-Task Writing via scripting to write multiple asset files (both Alembic and USD) at once, without re-evaluating the Maya DAG.

Elastic Compositions with Alembic & USD

Ability to write Elastic Compositions in Maya: these are either Multiverse Compositions or USD Compositions. Both can be contain ABC and USD assets, though Multiverse Compositions are faster since they do not pass through the USD Sdf API. Multiverse Compositions can be currently read in Maya, and soon in KATANA. Any item in the composition can be unpacked, re-arranged, transformed, their visibility changed: all in a familiar and completely user-transparent way and with automatic versioning. Elastic Compositions provide a powerful yet fast scene composition system.

Elastic Compounds & VP2

Every asset is read in the DCC App as an Elastic Compounds, a single node which can be "unpacked" on-demand to represent up to the asset's full hierarchy. Consequently users have the ability to assign attributes and materials at any unpacked point in the hierarchy. Further ability to "repack" assets. Hot-swappable VP2: bounding-box ↔ shaded geometry ↔ bypass viewport. Ultra-fast VP2 reading and drawing with tiny memory footprint.

X

Shading Networks with MaterialX

Ability to write & read full Maya, 3Delight and Arnold shading networks and material assignments in Maya and KATANA via MaterialXS the "eXtra Small"Python implementation of MaterialX, an open standard to interchange rich material and lookdev data between DCC Apps and renderers. MaterialXS is designed to provide a seamless transition of shading networks from Maya to KATANA while allowing TDs to inspect MaterialX files. MaterialXS is open source under Apache License 2.0 and available on GitHub.

Hierarchy Preservation

The hierarchy of assets is always fully preserved and natively accessible in the DCC App after reading assets through on-demand Elastic Compound "unpacking": this allows selective and dynamic material assignments, attribute and visibility overrides, and copy/instancing/xform/delete support while preserving maximum performance in Maya.

Procedural Rendering

Rendering of Assets is always procedural and deferred. Full deformation 3D curved motion blur is supported. Scene translation is faster since the actual data is outside of the DCC App, keeping scenes light-weight. Sharing of instances is automatically handled by the path tracers. This produces tiny memory footprint and quick time-to-first-pixel. Supported renderers are 3Delight, Arnold and RenderMan. Support for V-Ray and Redshift is currently work in progress.

Inspect Assets Before Reading

Easy to inspect metadata of Asset files such as back-end, start frame, end frame, total frames, number of motion samples etc. straight from the Maya UI on mouse over the Asset file, and without actually spending time reading the whole asset.